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actor network theory

The Social Life Of Methods

31 August-3 September 2010, St Hugh's College Oxford

Call for Papers

During the past century and longer, social scientific methods have come to be extensively deployed in government, administration and business, as well as in academic research. Maps, enumerations, surveys, interviews, indicators, software and visualizations proliferate. The aim of this conference is to consider how we can best understand the agency of social science methods in both shaping, and themselves being affected, by economic, social and cultural change, both historically and in the current context when digitalization poses specific challenges to established repertoires of social science methods.

Objects of security

Securitisation has been seen as largely part of the linguistic and social constructivist turn in international relations. Risk, security, disaster and war have been unpacked as discursive and institutional practices that constitute both that which is to be secured and the threat. As a performative and intersubjective practice, securitisation has largely ignored the role of ‘things’ in the articulation of insecurities.